It’s Tuesday and I’m leading a workshop on gender-based violence to a sorority and a girl in the front raises her hand. “We go to the bars and tell men that we’re lesbians,” she says, “so that way they don’t hit on us,” and I’m not sure what to say.

Silence.

The word lesbian has always been synonymous with silence. It’s a word I could not even let myself hear in my own head for the better part of twenty years.

When I hear “lesbian,” I don’t hear the free pass from men’s attention at bars that this girl seems to see.
I see a little girl in seventh grade and she’s frail because she won’t eat and the other kids think she’s weird and she sit in math class next to this girl with curly hair and she looks in her blue eyes and smiles at her and she knows she wants to
a) kiss this girl, and
b) die because girls do not kiss other girls.
I’m still struggling to admit that I’m carrying this girl deep inside me somewhere.

It’s staying in a relationship that was completely wrong for me and not hearing the signs because for the first time, I was loving a girl and nothing had felt more right to me before in my life.

It’s not hearing back from that girl from that coffee shop and not knowing if it’s because she simply does not like me or because dating a girl for her was too much too soon and she could not handle the noise that always follows.

It’s the marijuana legalization activist telling me that “we’re all just human beings, can’t you see that?” and he tells me that same-sex marriage is assimilationist. He does not see the silent deaths of our elders alone in the hospital, not able to visit their loved ones.

It’s being 19 and breaking that boy’s heart and not being able to tell him why.

It’s the silence on the other end of the phone where my mom sits with our cat, miles away, not knowing how to respond when I tell her that I like this girl who is quiet and kind and I think she likes me too. It’s my mom being okay with the girls and being okay with me. It’s how she just needs the silence. because behind the deafening silence, she cannot hear my crying.

It’s the kids at work asking if I have a boyfriend and I don’t say anything because I don’t want their parents to think of me as anything but moral and good and normal.

It’s the silence of the house I was left in with the darkness and the bats and everyone disappeared from my life because they did not like being lied to.

It’s the years I stayed silent when I wanted to scream at those men,
don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me

And there’s the silence of a girl sleeping next to me and my hair is wrapped gingerly around her fingers and I can see the remnants of a smile on the corners of her mouth and later she asks me if her silence freaks me out and for the first time, it’s not deafening or scary. This silence is brave and it’s beautiful and it’s content and all the bad things in the world around me fade to a dull murmur and her silence is one that I can handle.

No, this girl in the front row does not see my silence. She doesn’t have to.